a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Jazz Draft Odds and Ends: Day of

Quote of the night (Unintentional Dirty Quote Machine)
Steve Smith on Kanter: “He wants to bang, and going to Utah will be great for him and Tyrone Corbin.” (nba)

Back in time
Brandon Knight on Enes Kanter during his Jazz workout: Great player, funny guy. Funny guy to be around. He got accustomed to America really quickly. I love being around Enes. He was my roommate in Chicago; I spent a lot of time with him at Kentucky, and he’s just a great guy. (KALL)

** Kanter has 5.9% body fat despite not playing last year.

Kanter post-draft reaction
** I love to play toughness. I love to get hit. I just love to play toughness. It doesn’t matter who, I’m just gonna put myself in the court 100%. (nba)
** Jazz fans, first of all I’m so happy ’cause Utah Jazz pick me. I’m so thank you for it Jazz fan. I know I will bring lots of things to team. I will try to focus on my team and I will do everything for my team. (KSL)

** When’s the last time we had a player that went out and hit the opponent first rather than the other way around? Fes comes to mind, but I don’t think he does it on purpose.

Kanter and Memo
I have never met him before, but when I was little I followed him a lot. The time is real different so I woke up every morning at like 2, 3 or 4 in the morning and I watched him, and he’s a great player. I believe he will teach me a lot because we both play center and we both from Turkey and he will teach me lots of things. (DN)

Burks post-draft reaction
I’m crazy hyped. I got so much excitement. I finally realized my dream, so it’s a great thing. (Trib)

Burks on where his game needs improvement
Answer 1: I feel like just keep being better. Never be satisfied making it to the NBA. Just keep working everyday and just never be satisfied. (nba)
Answer 2: I feel like I can grow the most on defense. I can grow the most on shooting the NBA 3. I feel like if I can do both of them, the sky’s the limit. (KSL)
Answer 3: I feel like in the NBA, the consistency. I feel like I need to work on that the most. (KSL)

Other sports
Kanter: I play ping pong. (KFAN)
Burks: I like to play pool. I’m real good at pool. (KFAN)

Background
Kanter: My father is genetic professor and my mom was nurse. Right now she’s housewife. My [younger] brother is here and playing prep school in Florida. He just turned 16. He’s like 6’8″, something like that, lefty. (KFAN)

** Insert joke about dad being a genetics expert and mom being a medical professional and breeding giants for sons.

Good fit?
Burks: I feel like it’s a great fit for me. They got a lot of young guys, I can come in there and compete for minutes right away. They got a great coach and great management so I feel like it’s a great fit for me. (nba)

Toughness comes from…
Kanter: I start playing professional when I’m like 15, 16 years old…so I played against 30, 35 years old guy when I was 16, 15. So I think it’s probably because of that. (KFAN)

** Kanter is a huge WWE fan and particularly lovesThe Undertaker.Worked out pretty well for us last time we had a big that liked to play tough, get hit, hit others, “rassle,” referred to himself in the third person, and was ineligible to play NCAA ball his freshman year. Oh, and has four letters in his first name and six letters in his last name. OK, I’m done with finding similarities for the sake of finding similarites. I’ll let Alec Burks have the last word: